Facilitate Not Nannystate!

My feelings on everything that is wrong with Britain today could be summed up as ‘an obsession with control (a Nanny State approach) that not only fails to facilitate personal choices but actively blocks the individual from advancing’.

The State should exist as a servant of the People, providing the services that they require when they require them, rather than acting as Lord and Master. Rather than telling people how to live their lives, the State should ensure that as many pathways are open to people as they require. Unemployed? Rather than laying on a raft of benefits linked to excessive demands to interfere in claimants lives, I’d much rather see a pared back set of benefits and a more hands-off approach in which practical routes into training and employment are offered rather than the current overbearing yet ineffectual attempts. Similarly, I’d like to see an NHS more willing to engage with the individual needs and aspirations of its patients than the current ‘one size fits all’ approach that has led to scandal after scandal.

By giving people more responsibility, people would be encouraged to take control of their own lives rather than coasting along in the clutches of Nanny. Equally, by offering people more personalised approaches, we would encourage them to engage. How many youths achieve nothing because impersonal training approaches leave them numb? How many sick people just give up because the NHS just doesn’t give a damn about their particular circumstances? How many suicides occur because people cannot see a meaningful choice between the bullying clutches of the State and being cast adrift without any help and support?

Facilitation is what we need for the future, not an ever-increasing Nanny State…